368
Hi Everyone,
Have you ever possessed something that you loved so much that you wanted to share with others? That is how I feel about the garden—whether it is the joy of looking at it, eating from it, or pulling the weeds out of it. For years I have dreamed of sharing the flowers with others to, and Mom keeps asking for more and more flowers but I just cannot seem to think BIG enough. I buy 100 gladiola bulbs—but Mom wants a long row of them. I want to start over a hundred gomphrena, cosmos and amaranth plants—but I buy one seed packet that has only about 50 seeds in it. We have managed to plant five, sixty foot long rows of flowers, but I will say that this is my year to learn—but I have to wait a whole year to apply what I have learned. One thing that I have learned is that I want a hundred feet of sweet peas next year. Sweet peas are so beautiful and smell so delicious that I wish I could sell bouquets of them now—but I only have eight plants. I have also learned that I want over 1000 daffodil bulbs—because being able to hold spring in your hand after months of cold weather is just an absolute must!
We had nothing pressing us for time last week so we were able to work on some extra projects. Mom got more grass dug up in the courtyard and more flowers planted in its place. We finally got the garden mowed—the weeds were so high and FULL of seeds. We have a joke around here about “the neighbors who never mow their weeds.” A few years ago we were watching a VLOG by Curtis Stone—The Urban Farmer. He is known for not having weeds in his garden, and one day he was giving a tour of his garden and someone asked why he had black plastic over his garden beds that are empty—since he doesn’t have any weeds. Curtis answered that his neighbors never cut their weeds down and he has to keep their weed seeds out of his garden. So now Mom and I laugh that we are “those neighbors who never mow down their weeds.” It isn’t that we like weeds going to seed; it is just that we have a hard time getting everything done. So thankfully we were finally able to make those weeds vanish and the grasses appear again. While Mom and Steve weeded, I worked on my own project—that of making some pretty powerful tea. Thirty years ago when my Grandma came to visit with her boyfriend and his two boys, she told them that we used horse manure to make tea. The boys were not too sure about eating lunch at a place that makes their tea out of manure. We all had a good laugh—for we didn’t drink the tea, we used it to fertilize our garden. It has probably been over ten years since we made any manure tea, and we do not make it with horse manure anymore—because we do not have any horses. Flowers love to be fertilized often, and since we have an abundance of them this year I wanted to be able to feed them well. We still have our old tea barrel, so all I had to do was clean it up and weed around it. I decided to cover the area with stepping stones in order to keep the weeds away, and to keep the area from getting muddy. Papa helped fix the top of it so that the lid would fit back on, and then we placed it off the ground on some concrete blocks, filled it up with water and filled one pillowcase with chicken manure compost and another pillowcase with cow manure. I will let that “steep” for a few weeks and then I will have some homemade fertilizer that is high in nitrogen, phosphorus, and potassium.
On Tuesday we got to spend a little bit of time in the garden before lunch and our egg party. Last Saturday was so windy that the end plastic to the Western Caterpillar tunnel blew in on top of the vegetables. Thankfully Papa had just returned home from deliveries—but instead of getting to sit down and relax, we drug him out with us to the garden. The wind was so fierce that it was all Mom and I could do to hold onto the plastic while Papa cut it loose. We no longer need the side covered, so it was time to remove it anyway—but it would have been easier on a non-windy day. The plastic did some damage to the Swiss chard and some of the lettuce, so on Tuesday I finally got around to taking care of it. I harvested most of the lettuce, and then I trimmed off all the bad leaves of the Swiss chard, collards and kale. The chickens ate real well that day. When we came in for lunch I was going to finish up the yogurt first—but it wasn’t cooled off enough because I had chicken broth in the oven. That meant that after lunch—when it was time to package eggs, I was stuck in the kitchen making yogurt, bottling the chicken broth, and getting the dishes into the dishwasher. I thought that I would never arrive at the egg party before they were done—but I did! When the party was over my piano student showed up, and when my piano lessons were over I had to figure out a nightmare—I couldn’t open up our emails in Outlook or on the web. I called AT&T—but they were no help (talk to this person: “no we don’t deal with that”, talk to that person: “no we don’t deal with that”, talk to this person: “what is your 9 digit account number?” and all my account numbers are longer than 9 digits, talk to that person: “what is your four digit number?” I DON”T KNOW! And they hung up on me!) Finally I called our technical support people and they took control and found out that we had been hacked. It cost a pretty penny, but the problem was fixed in a few hours. Tuesday night is when I put all the orders together and make the receipts for the Jacksonville delivery—and 99% of our orders come in by email. I was a little concerned when I couldn’t access our emails. Thankfully the problem did get fixed, but it was 9:00 before I had all the emails answered. Then I had to make receipts—but I was way too tired from too many late nights and I couldn’t even focus on the screen. Instead, I headed for a shower and bed and Mom made the receipts.
On Thursday I had one goal—fix the sprinkler system in the west tunnel. When we bought the tunnel last fall, I also bought the sprinkler system for it—but we never got it put up. We were using a sprinkler head and would have to move it from one side of the tunnel to the other. It was a lot of running back and forth to the garden to get a bed watered. The worst part though was that it was only about a foot off the ground and it was mutilating the plants that were growing right beside it. Since I had cleaned up all the plants in the tunnel I didn’t want to tear them up again when we watered—so I was going to raise the sprinklers up three feet. According to Mom my idea was not going to work and she suggested that I get Papa’s help—so I went to Papa and asked what was on his agenda for the day. You see, I thought that if I was going to need Papa’s help to rig this sprinkler up higher, why not get Papa’s help to put the proper sprinkler system in place. Papa said that he had three things to do: take Moises home, go to the bank, and go buy more hay. Since Mom and I had to go shopping on Friday I told him not to worry about the bank, and I offered to take Moises home. He asked me what I wanted—and I told him that I wanted the sprinkler system put up in the tunnel. He finished his chores, headed inside for a break, watched a YouTube on how to install the system and headed to the garden. By late afternoon we had overhead water sprinklers in the west tunnel. These sprinklers were improved from the last tunnel in that they only hung down about two feet from the ceiling. The east tunnel sprinklers hung down in our faces and we constantly had to dodge them if someone was walking in front of us. They got caught in our clothes, hair and were just a plain nuisance. Since the new sprinklers were shorter, Papa had the brilliant idea to cut the old ones and make them shorter—what a genius!
In the meantime, I decided that it was time to clean up the rose arbor in the backyard. The elephant grass was growing up in the walkway, around the posts, and had totally taken over the rose vine. I initially just planned on making it possible to walk through the arbor, but Steve and Mom came to help and we tackled every piece of elephant grass that we could get our hands on. Some of it was easy, but some of the roots went a good foot or more down. The last root went right through the middle of the roses roots. We did not want to have to dig up the rose—for it had finally grown to cover the whole arbor. Mom and Steve painstakingly pulled the dirt away from the rose roots without disturbing them and then they were able to pull the last elephant grass root out. We then continued to clean up along the fence and around the gas tank. Once we are convinced that we got it all (every few days more sprouts), we will fill the huge hole in with good dirt and plant some redbud and crepe myrtle trees along with some flowers—no more invasive landscapes!
Friday we headed to town for our every six weeks grocery shopping spree—although groceries were not the only thing we needed in town, and it was 3:00 before we ever started out. By 5:00 we were ready to head to Publix, but my sister needed us to pick up her children so that they could work the concession trailer at the local rodeo. Mom dropped me off at Publix, ran over to pick up the children, then came back to pick me up. I had planned hamburgers for dinner, but I wasn’t too sure that a 3 year old and an 8 year old would enjoy a hamburger. I decided to make hamburgers with half of the ground beef, and spaghetti with the other half. Mom is allergic to tomatoes and she cannot eat any grain—so we never eat spaghetti. I grabbed a bag of Tinkyada brown rice spaghetti noodles, and the best organic spaghetti sauce I could find that didn’t have any citric acid (corn) in it. I was picky because I had decided that Papa and I would eat spaghetti with the children, and Mom could have a hamburger. I must admit that I found spaghetti to be the fastest meal ever to cook—boil the water and cook the noodles for 15 minutes, brown the meat and pour the sauce over the top and bring to a boil, shred cheese, serve and eat. Dinner was down in 20 to 30 minutes.
Saturday night after dinner we decided to head outside and enjoy the evening. There was a bush growing on our property line that is in full bloom that I wanted Mom to see, so we drove out there first. When we got back we walked around in the courtyard enjoying all the pretties. As we were looking at what Mom had just planted we kept hearing this strange sliding noise. We looked around and found that on the roof of the house a fledgling mockingbird was trying to fly. The mother mockingbird was sitting on top of the chimney calling away, and the baby kept giving it his best flaps, but only managed to get about four feet up the chimney and then slide back down. Catapus became very interested in the commotion, but I picked her up and carried her away. When she went back later I shooed her far away. We had to go do dishes so I never got to see if the fledging spent another night in his nest in the lemon tree, or if he managed to fly off to explore the world.
Well, I know where I am going to be spending my night—in my bed so that I can be rested up for whatever adventures come our way this week. I know that I shall have a big one tomorrow as I have an angel food cake to make for Papa’s birthday party tomorrow night—he turned 70 yesterday! My sister and Papa share a birthday so tomorrow my two sisters and their families are coming over for dinner.
Serving you with Gladness,
Tiare